The gaming industry, just like many like it, has its own ups, which took the form of successful devices and games, and downs, which are represented by its mistakes.
However, a few of the gaming industry's mistakes aren't isolated to the company that made them.
Here are some mistakes in video game history that affected the whole world.
Making Star Wars Battlefront 2 Pay to Win
EA's decision to put pay-to-win mechanics in Star Wars Battlefront 2 was the issue that first caused governments worldwide to look more closely at in-game microtransactions (with some of them considering them gambling).
When the game was first released, players immediately complained about the loot box system the game was sporting. According to the calculations of Reddit user u/The_Kratos, people will need to play the game for 4,528 hours to unlock everything in the game's initial release for free or spend $2,100 to buy in-game currency to get them immediately.
The outrage has gotten so bad that Hawaii's Democratic State Representative Chris Lee investigated EA for its loot-box system, which it called "suprise mechanics," per Gamespot and Polygon.
EA has removed all pay-to-win mechanics in March 2018, per Extreme Tech.
Sony's Online Network Getting Hacked
Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) wasn't always the cool and secure network it is now. Back in 2011, hackers from hacktivist group Anonymous attacked the network and stole the personal information of millions of gamers on the PSN. According to Vox, the attack was so bad, that it took the network down for weeks.
Anonymous' attack was in response to Sony's lawsuit against an American hacker that attempted to reverse-engineer the PlayStation 3 to allow players to play third-party games not authorized by Sony.
Sony, which initially hid the reason for the outage, eventually confessed, sparking public outrage targeting the company, per Eurogamer.
This outrage led to Sony's executives publicly apologizing for badly handling the issue and bowing down in front of the world.
More TV Than Gaming For Microsoft
The PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One were supposed to be a breath of fresh air for Sony and Microsoft. However, only one of them appealed to the crowd better than the other, and it was Sony.
CBR mentioned that Microsoft in its presentation of the Xbox One has the potential of becoming a media hub for the living room due to its TV integration, providing gaming and entertainment at the same time, per Kotaku.
However, Xbox fans took the presentation the wrong way, saying that the Xbox is more of a TV than a gaming console. The lack of backward compatibility on the Xbox One and its always-online DRM also pushed away many of Microsoft's potential customers, opting to get the PS4 instead, which offers more freedom to gamers, per Complex.
Rushing The Release Of Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red was once among the most beloved game developers in the world thanks to the success of the Witcher games. However, one bad decision ultimately killed its once-good reputation.
Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red's next game after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, is no stranger to delays. According to Game8, the game was delayed three times before it was released on December 10, 2020. Some of these delays were reasonable as they happened during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, gamers were more than frustrated at the game's many bugs on release. Windows Central has a 17-item list of the game's top bugs on release and their fixes.
This list showed how badly CD Projekt Red disappointed fans to the point that it tarnished its once-good reputation.
Rushing The ET Video Game For The Atari
Cyberpunk 2077 isn't the only rushed disappointment, and it isn't bad enough that it earned the title of "worst video game in the world."
That title belongs to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.
The game was a commercial flop and a gaming disaster for a good reason: the game was rushed, resulting in a game that was a "confusing mess that left players frustrated and disorientated," per NPR.
The game's developer, Howard Scott Warshaw, only had 36 hours to make a concept for the game and five weeks to make it. The game also had E.T. the alien walk around collecting parts of a communicator to "phone home."
However, the game's map wrapped around itself, and the map had pits that E.T. could fall into to either get trapped or get a part of the communicator, causing confusion and disorientation.
The entire video game industry collapsed within a year of the game's release, with unsold copies eventually finding their way to a New Mexico landfill - a place where many of them can still be found.
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